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When the Capobiancos set out to adopt Veronica one of their strategies was to strike down the ICWA or the Indian Child Welfare Act. I won’t bother you with a long explanation of this law. By now most of us have come to understand it’s purpose and the reasoning behind it. But basically, it’s meant to protect Indian families and their children when it comes to adoption. The Capobiancos logic behind their campaign to destroy this law seemed somewhat reasonable in theory. It was that they wanted to open up adoption and make it racially blind. They wanted adoptions to have no basis on race whatsoever. And they saw the Indian Child Welfare Act as giving racial preference to Indians and therefore, racist. I don’t agree but I can see that there was some logic there.

You see, it was Veronica they wanted so they formed a strategy. The ICWA was only a hurdle in their path. It wasn’t that this particular issue mattered to them but it was the thing they had to get past to get Veronica. Prior to, they probably hadn’t even heard of this law. But given it got in their way now, they had to set up a game plan. That game plan was to destroy the law. They didn’t care about the law or the people it was meant to protect. They didn’t even care what it’s intent was. They only cared that it was in their way with respect to their goal in that moment. So they set out to destroy it to get Veronica and came up with the whole ‘it’s racist’ mantra later. They came up with all the reasons for destroying it later to look as if they were truly being selfless. It didn’t matter whether they believed or supported their own hype. It was just what needed to be said to get there. They were like Kardashians advertising for QuickTrim. They didn’t need to buy their own product. That product didn’t even need to work. They didn’t need to believe it in. They just needed it to sell. They needed people to buy into their propaganda and support them in striking down parts of the ICWA so they could win.

The Cappobiancos chipped away at the ICWA not because they believed in their fight or because it should have been done. They did it for no other reason than they could. And now they raise the Indian child whose culture they’ve helped to destroy.

And after they won, Jessica Munday, their spokesperson, issued the following to their supporters:

While Congress has yet to amend the ICWA, our collective effort surrounding Veronica’s case will indeed help ensure this situation will not happen to another child. As a matter of fact, it already has. We have been informed her case has already been used in several cases to block similar travesties from occurring…. If anyone would like to continue advocating for children being hurt by the ICWA, please connect with the following groups.Christian Alliance for Indian Child Welfareadministrator@caicw.orgHome Foreverinfo@home-4-ever.orgCoalition for the protection of Indian Children and Familiesinfo@coalitionforindianchildren.org

So you see, Munday, their spokesperson, is now saying to supporters ‘Well folks, it’s been nice but we’ve done our job. We couldn’t care less about this. Find somewhere else to take your issues to. We’re done here. Go join up with someone else who wants to help you destroy ICWA now.’ Or the short form: ‘We’re done. Go scratch.’

It wasn’t that this issue itself mattered. The ICWA didn’t matter. Indians didn’t matter. Their plight didn’t matter. Even if the law was destroyed completely, it didn’t matter. Getting to keep Veronica was all that mattered. And if, after that happened, everything else crumbled and the world stopped turning, that just didn’t matter. So we, whether in support of Native Americans and the ICWA or not, are left to pick up the pieces and suffer the consequences. Whether you supported Brown or the Capobiancos, what’s left is the result of what they’ve done. And that should infuriate you. Whether you fought to strengthen the law or tear is apart, your fight wasn’t even recognized because some couple who it mattered nothing to swept in, did their damage and ran.

We are left with a precedent here that tells other women that if they can hold out long enough, cut off all access to the child and never answer a door or accept any support, they too can thwart the father and shuffle his child off for adoption without his consent. And this case will be used as precedence both with respect to Native fathers and to all fathers. Women can now lawfully ‘Maldonado’ the fathers right out of their children. (Yes, Maldonado has now become a verb.)

If you didn’t support the law and wanted it dismantled, you worked with a couple whose heart wasn’t in the fight with you. They climbed up your back and trampled your heads as they stood on top of you as their platform then they took their prize and ran. They used you to make themselves more visible and their voices louder but they cared nothing for you, your fight or any of the related legislation.

13 Responses to “We’re WASP’s. It’s What We Do.”

The whole affair is appalling,the American Government has a lot to answer for just as the American Court system has, when a country can steal a child from a good and loving parent and give the child to the highest bidder and call it justice, then that country needs to be investigated by the United Nations.What America has allowed to happen here is a crime against biological parents all over America,, if it can happen Dusten Brown a man who fought for his country in time of war, it can happen to any American Parent. American people need to stand up together and demand that Veronica be returned to her biological family before someone you love is in the same boat. When a birth person decides they do not want to raise their birth child, that child has the right to go straight to the other birth person (in most cases the Father) every child deserves to be raised by biological family not strangers.As far as I believe the adoptive couple and the egg donor(she does not deserve to use the name of Mother) should be jailed for child trafficing and illegal selling of children.The adoptive couple bought and paid for Veronica, and the public will never know how much money was paid under the table for Veronica, the other couple did not care about Veronica being raised by her biological family, they had paid for her and they wanted what they paid for. Private adoption should be illegal,children should not be bought and sold, this whole affair is a tragedy for Dusten and Veronica Brown, and the other couple will pay dearly for what they have done. Veronica will never forgive them when she gets old enough to read and realizes what they have deprived her of, she will always be thought of by most of the world as Veronica Brown, the stolen daughter of Dusten Brown. GOD BLESS Dusten and Veronica Brown and all the Brown family and may Veronica come home to you all very soon. I am glad that I do not live in America, as I have no respect for it justice system. From Australia

Bravo, well said. I wish I didn’t live here either, the justice system is a joke. I live in the Cherokee Nation, worked for the Cherokee Nation and I still don’t know how Federal Marshalls came on tribal property of a sovereign nation and took Veronica from her father. It is sad and happening all over again, by the same legal team with a Shawnee child.

People who want to destroy the IWCA don’t understand why it’s needed to protect our children. Don’t understand that our children have been taken away en masse to the federal boarding schools and that today our children are most often taken away by child protective services. Not because of unfit parenting but because the states make money for every native child they have in the system. This whole idea is telling us that we don’t know what’s best for our children because as indigenous people we are clearly savage and backwards. It sickens me that they act like Veronica is a prize that they’ve won at the county fair and they show her off like they’ve won something. Not a person but a thing that they can show off. It’s disgusting and Natives need to continue to take a stand and fight for our rights which are clearly still not equal.

This: “We are left with a precedent here that tells other women that if they can hold out long enough, cut off all access to the child and never answer a door or accept any support, they too can thwart the father and shuffle his child off for adoption without his consent.” YES. That quote right there is one of the scariest things about this whole scary, icky, nasty, case. (And you’re right. The C’s didn’t care about the ICWA – it was only a block to getting the child they PAID for – a child to whom they felt entitled, like buying a car or a house. They’d signed the papers, had the “keys”, and wanted to possess their property no matter what.) Unfortunately it’s not as scary/unusual as it should be because the industry is geared toward feeding hopeful adoptive parent entitlement.

Of course the Capobiancos do not care about biological families, since they can’t have their own children and were willing to adopt a child “knowing that the biological father might cause problems if he finds out.” The Capobiancos are White, and they are affluent, and they are spoiled and do not care about anything but getting their own way. But not all Whites are like the Capobiancos.

One of my best friends growing up was a white girl who was adopted very early by two loving white parents who had the best intentions, far better than there is any sign that the Capobiancos ever could be. The parents really thought that they were doing the right thing, and it was a privately arranged adoption with a single mother who lived in the same town and knew the adoptive parents before the adoption and all the adults thought that this was the best thing for the very young unwed mother. And my friend was absolutely devastated when she found out that she had been adopted, and she never got over it.

Fortunately Ronnie Brown has an ally that is stronger than I realized. Approximately 2% of the population in this country now is adopted, and apparently an awful lot of adopted adult of all races are very unhappy about being removed from their family of origin, cut off from kin, cut off from knowing where they came from and who their extended family as well as their nuclear family. The movement to change adoption laws by adults who were adopted as children is growing rapidly, and it is about time. Children even in dangerous homes miss their parents dreadfully when removed. As much as possible we need to support children in their homes, in their families of origin or as near to it as is safe for the children. Society needs to support the wellbeing of our children, but an incredibly important part of that is knowing who I am and where I come from.

The story of Ronnie Brown is drawing more and more adults adopted as children into the adoption reform and adoption elimination movement. And maybe their voices will be heard finally and maybe adoption will become the last resort it should be, rather than treating it as causally as giving away extra kittens, like some legislators and judges have done, knowing that it was never likely to happen to their children.

If even an upright responsible middle class man like Dusten Brown can have his child stolen and sold, and have the highest court in the land treat it as a trivial issue, every parent ought to start being very afraid that someone will legally steal any parent’s child next. Is your child particularly good in school or at sports? Maybe someone better off than you will feel entitled to steal your child. Dusten Brown was being a good father, raising his child to be a bright happy responsible child, and two incompetent parent wanna-bes who are such poor parents that they have had to label poor stolen Ronnie Brown as a special needs child because they admit they cannot raise her otherwise, because they are able to pay more money for her, these incompetent parent wanna-bes are encouraged by the courts to make off with Dusten Brown’s child, while he is away at training in the National Guard. Then they threaten Dusten Brown with imprisonment for failing to have Ronnie Brown handed over to these parental incompetents in his absense, and threaten to have the courts order him to pay all their lawyer fees and other legal expenses for stealing his daughter if he and the Cherokee Nation do not drop their attempts to rescue Ronnie Brown.

It is unlikely that the Capobiancos could even take care of a small gaggle of geese as well as Ronnie Brown as a four year old was able to care for her geese, let alone care for a child as bright and capable as Ronnie Brown. But to mask their incompetence, the Capobiancos have sought to begin drugging Ronnie Brown into compliance. Believe me, many whites, especially ones adopted as children, or who had friends who were adopted as children are also outraged at what has been done to Ronnie Brown already, and will persist in trying to see that Ronnie Brown gets home to her real family as soon as possible.

ICWA is about racial injustice done to children of sovereign nations, and weakening it is therefore a tragic failing. But all adoption is about a failure of a society to adequately provide for children, and it is not about the failure of the birth parents to provide for children as much as it is about the failure of the rest of us to support families in distress. It is about the failure of the affluent and successful in society to see that all children have an adequate chance in life, within their own communities and families.

It is about a society that has resegregated the schools that were integrated after Brown v, Board of Education. It is about a society that does not meet even the basic health care needs of all children. It is about a society that legalizes alcohol and criminalizes the use of safer cheaper drugs (as well as more dangerous ones) and in doing so makes it less likely that parents with a drug problem will get help to overcome the problem. It is about a society that lets children grow up in the midst of violence, because they don’t live in the right neighborhoods, and much of the violence is over low level drug trafficking.

It is about a society that imposes far longer sentences still on minorities convicted of the same crimes, and provides inadequate legal counsel and allows prosecutors overly free rein to violate Constitutional rights, and when occasionally a defendant’s Constitutional rights are upheld, say that the defendant “got off on a technicality”. It is a society that no longer cares how many factually innocent people are convicted, as long as it isn’t me.

And yes this is a White dominated society, but this is not a society where all Whites cause the problems and all the harm falls on the minorities, although disproportional harm does fall on minorities. In the name of ending racism, society now cheerfully is destroying a larger and larger section of the White community, with equal indifference to whether it is merited. But even before that, support from parts of the White community has been steadily growing. There are a growing number of Whites that are also aware of the outrages of the government and the affluent, and are trying to make a difference.

Well said. And demographically our nation is changing. The white “majority” will be a minority in 20 years. As you mentioned, adoptees are getting a stronger voice and we are affecting change. We need to continue to rally and fight for our rights. Thank you for keeping this issue alive.

Can you substantiate your comment about drugging Veronica? I very much like what you have to say but I am wondering if you are making an assumption in regards to Veronica’s “special needs” status or whether you somehow have insider information. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Capobiancos seek to medicate Veronica because they need to control her so she fits in with their picture of what “their daughter” is (essentially, a child desperately in love with them and glad to have been “rescued”) but it’s all conjecture at the moment.

She was labeled special needs due to being mixed race. It was done so the Capobiancos could avoid reporting where all the money was spent to get her and so they could qualify for special programs. As for the drugging issue being tossed around, while it is hearsay, a few pictures have surfaced of Veronica showing a substantial weight gain and somewhat dead look in her eyes. Usually this is a sign of drugging, but given the circumstances and their so called “cookie therapy”, it could just as easily be unhealthy emotional eating habits and being utterly miserable because of what they’d done to her.

I really wish this would stop. So many have said Veronica is being drugged because she supposedly looked sleepy or whatever in a photo. Quit assigning your fears to this child! It’s bad enough that she has been taken from her father already but then to lay all these rumors on top if it is adding insult to injury. The family has to read all this as well and see this in the media and it’s hurtful. While the C’s may be monsters for having taken her from her family, we have no proof other than supposition and fantasy that they are drugging her.

I will post my source when I find where I put it again, but no, it was not just looking at her face in pictures.

I do not have the place where I got that information available at the moment, but the information was that Ronnie Brown was adopted by the Capobiancos as a special needs child, which meant that the state would continue to pay a stipend of some sort to cover the Capobiancos’ additional costs of raising Ronnie, including costs of medication. The report did not specifically specify what type of medication, and of course it is possible that Ronnie has high blood pressure or diabetes or some other physical ailment. However, it is a lot more common that this type of a special needs adoption involves psychotropic drugs, ie ones that alter mood or brain function. There are plenty of children who are in their biological families who are treated with similar drugs, for example with Ritalin or Adderal for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. However, the use of mood or thought altering drugs is significantly higher in adopted children, and especially in adopted minority children.

Some people cite this as a benefit that these children gain from adoption, because now the caregivers can afford to give the children the medication that they needed all along. And I expect that in a few cases that is true. But in some cases it is just the parents not being able to cope with an energetic child who is stressed by being removed from their parents and placed in a new family with very little information about why they have been taken from one family and given to another. Children see the world from the perspective of a child, so even if they are given the story in full as the adults see the story, it still rarely makes sense from a child’s perspective. So foster children and adopted children act out in reaction to their world being torn apart and turned upside down, and instead of comfort and answers, too many of them get lies and drugs to calm them down and make them more manageable.

So Ronnie Brown is getting medicated regularly for some reason. She was not getting medicated with this medicine when she lived with Dusten Brown, and there was no evidence presented at all that there were problems with the care that Dusten Brown was giving Ronnie. So apparently, while trying to justify why Ronnie should be given to the Capobiancos, there was no claim made that Ronnie needed other medication. So Ronnie needs medication to live with the Capobiancos, and does not need medication to live in the home of her birth father and his second wife. To me this sounds like clear evidence that Ronnie is better cared for by Dusten and Robin.

But, I am making assumptions about the nature of the medication and the reason it is being given to Ronnie. I don’t think we are likely to be able to know what medication Ronnie is being given, because of privacy laws. Unless either Ronnie tells us when she grows up, or it becomes discussed in open court, like so many other aspects of this case which are usually sealed but haven’t been. This case has violated custom of keeping child custody and adoption sealed, over and over again. The court records are not sealed because there is an important precedent being set that it is acceptable to steal children from fit birth parents under circumstances that will never allow the Justices children or grandchildren to be stolen from them.

At least someday Ronnie will know how long and hard her father fought for her. Hopefully her story will help other “adopted” children to understand that they too were probably wanted and loved by their birth parents, but sometimes “adoptions” happened anyhow.